Where I Belong (9 page)

I shrug and swat at the gnats circling my head, tiny buzzing things that bite my ears and my scalp and get in my eyes. “His world has different rules,” I say. “They don't have money there.”

Shea frowns. “What if he's not who you think he is?” she asks. “What if he's just an old bum?”

Before I can stop myself, my fist flies out and I punch her arm. She pulls back, surprised. “Never say that again,” I hiss at her. “Never!”

“You hit me! Nobody hits me!” Shea jumps up, her face red.

I get up too, but she's already running into the woods, her back dappled with splashes of sunlight. “Come back,” I call after her. “I'm sorry. I didn't hit you hard, it couldn't have hurt.”

But she's already gone. I hear the faint sound of bushes rustling as she crashes through them and then nothing. I glance at the Green Man. He has one eye open, watching me.

“What happened, Brendan? Where did Shea go?”

I'm so ashamed that I turn away, unable to look at him while I tell him. “I hit her—I didn't mean to, and it wasn't a hard hit, just a sort of punch. But she ran off.”

The Green Man sits up. A leaf falls out of his hair. “Why on earth did you hit her?”

“She said something that made me mad. Now she hates me.”

“No, no, no.” The Green Man pats my shoulder. “She'll get over it. She's not the sort to hate anyone. Nor is she the sort to stay mad long. Wait and see. She'll be fine tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow's Saturday,” I say. “She'll be gone all weekend with her family.”

“Where's she going this time?”

“To Deep Creek Lake. Her father bought a kayak. She showed me a picture in the L.L. Bean catalog. It's red. She's going to learn how to paddle it.”

The Green Man strokes his beard. “Lucky Shea.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Have you ever met Shea's family?” the Green Man asks.

“I've never even been to her house,” I admit.

“Why not?”

I shrug and swat a mosquito making a meal of my blood. “She's never invited me.”

“But she's your best friend.”

“Well, she's never been to my house either.”

“And why ever not?”

“Because Mrs. Clancy doesn't allow me to bring kids over when she's not there, and she's not home very much because she works at the card shop at the mall. Besides, she's grumpy. She probably wouldn't like Shea.”

I hesitate. “Plus I told Shea I live with my mother just like an ordinary kid.”

The Green Man scratches his belly and gazes into the woods, his face sad. “Why did you lie?” he asks slowly, as if he isn't sure he should pry into my life.

“Everybody thinks there's something wrong with foster kids. They have bad blood or something. I heard one of Mrs. Clancy's friends say that.”

He shakes his head and puts an arm around my shoulder. “The world is full of small-minded people,” he says. “There's nothing wrong with you, Brendan. You're fine.”

I lean against him. He's big and solid and I feel safe with him. “You and Shea are the only friends I have,” I say. “And now maybe I'm down to just you.”

“It's late,” he says after a while. “When does Mrs. Clancy come home?”

“Around seven,” I tell him.

“Must be almost that now.”

The Green Man and I walk together through the woods. I feel the animals gathering near us, deer and rabbits, foxes and squirrels, raccoons. I can't see them or hear them, but they hide in the underbrush and watch me walk by with the Green Man, the king of the forest. He's protecting me the way he protects them.

A train is coming, so we stop beside the tracks and watch it thunder past, shaking the rails with its weight, boxcars bouncing and swaying. When it's gone, the Green Man says goodbye and walks back into the woods.

In a second, he's gone. No twig snaps. No leaf rustles.

I think of what Shea said, and I know she's wrong. Only a true Green Man could vanish into the woods without a sound. He's magic. He is.

He must be.

I
T'S NOT MRS CLANCY'S SATURDAY
to work, so I don't have to waste the day at the mall. I eat breakfast at six a.m., long before she gets up. Before I fell asleep last night, I made a plan. Once, I heard Shea tell Mr. Hailey she lived on Summer Hill Road. I don't know the house number, but I know where the street is. I figure I'll walk up and down the street, and if I'm lucky I'll see her before she leaves for Deep Creek Lake. I'll apologize for hitting her and forgive her for what she said about the Green Man.

I know where Summer Hill Road is because there's a Dairy Queen on the corner. Once in a while, if she's in a good mood, Mrs. Clancy stops there on the way home from the mall and buys us each a double swirl cone. Chocolate for her and vanilla for me. We sit on a picnic bench and watch people come and go. Mrs. Clancy doesn't want to get in the car until we're finished so I don't get ice cream on the upholstery.

It's a long walk, uphill, downhill all the way across town, along Route 22, a treeless road jammed with cars and trucks and buses belching fumes like dragons. I've never been so hot in my life. There's no escape from the sun or the smell of fast food frying in old grease, but I keep my feet moving by picturing the red kayak and the river. And Shea—seeing her, making up with her, being friends again.

The Dairy Queen is at the top of a hill, and by the time I get there my hair is a wet mop on the back of my neck, my T-shirt sticks to my skin, and I wish I had enough money to buy a soda. I think about going in and asking for some water, but I remember they charge you ten cents for the cup and I don't even have that.

Even if I had a dime, it wouldn't make any difference. The place isn't open yet.

I head down Summer Hill Road. The houses are little wood bungalows, exactly alike except for stuff people have done to them since they were built. Additions, different paint colors, screened-in porches, gardens, trellises. Some houses look really nice, others are in bad shape. Dirt or weeds instead of grass. Peeling paint. Overgrown bushes.

I keep expecting the neighborhood to change. Where are the big houses? Surely rich people don't live in places like this.

I come to another hill. I tell myself the houses on the other side will be fancy and I'll see Shea. But at the top of the hill, I stare down at a cluster of brick apartment buildings and rows of duplex houses. It's a dead end at the railroad tracks.

I can't think of any other Summer Hill but this one. I must have misunderstood the name of her street.

So I keep walking. What else is there to do? At the end of the street, I can follow the railroad tracks to the woods.

I pass the Summer Hill Gardens apartment complex but I don't see any gardens, just brown grass and a few lopsided bushes half dead from the heat. On the other side of the street are the duplex houses. One has a foreclosure sign in front. The weeds are so tall, I can't see the sidewalk. The windows have sheets of plywood nailed over them, spray-painted with gang tags. I can tell no one lives there anymore.

I see junked cars in yards, a refrigerator without a door on someone's porch, rusty bikes and broken toys. Dogs bark and growl and lunge at the chainlink fences. One house has three signs on the gate:
BEWARE OF DOG, GUARD DOG ON PREMISES, PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP OUT
. I wonder what they can possibly have in that house.

Then I see Shea. I stop and hide behind a telephone pole. She's standing on the porch of a rundown duplex, yelling at someone inside. “I'm not changing his diapers. He stinks. You're his mother—you do it!”

The screen door opens. A hand grabs Shea and yanks her inside. The door slams with a bang that echoes off the apartments across the street. Three or four dogs in the yard next door start barking.

A woman shouts at Shea. Shea shouts back. I can't understand what they're saying, but they're mad. A baby cries. A man opens the door and lets it slam behind him.
Bang
. It's like a gunshot. The dogs bark frantically. They race up and down the fence, snarling.

Someone inside the house yells, “Where are you going?”

“Out,” the man hollers. He's red-faced from the heat. His T-shirt is dark with sweat under his arms. His jeans dip below his belly. Ignoring the shouts and wails behind him, he runs down the steps and jumps into an old truck. Revving the engine, he backs down the driveway, turns toward Route 22, and passes me. I glimpse his face, tight with anger, and then he's gone.

I don't know what to do. I don't understand what I'm seeing. Nothing matches Shea's description of her house and family.

I stand behind the telephone pole and wait for something else to happen. The yelling in the house slowly subsides. The baby stops crying. The dogs next door curl up in the shade under the front porch. Heat prickles my skin. Sweat runs down my back. I think about cutting my hair. Maybe even shaving my head.

Finally the door opens. Shea comes out carrying a baby. A little girl follows her. Then a boy who's about seven. Shea dumps the baby in a stroller in the front yard and opens the gate. She walks toward me but she doesn't see me because she's talking to the little girl.

“Don't suck your thumb, Tessa. It makes you look stupid.”

Tessa looks at Shea, but she keeps her thumb in her mouth.

Shea frowns. “Do you want to look stupid?”

Tessa stares at her feet. She's wearing frayed flip-flops and her T-shirt is stained with chocolate. “I hate you,” she mutters.

I shift around the pole, trying to hide. I shouldn't have come here. Shea will be mad if she sees me.

The little boy stops and stares at me. “Who's that girl?” he asks Shea.

She stops dead. Her face turns red. “Brendan, what are you doing here?”

She looks at me as if I've committed a crime. Maybe I have. My guts are tied into big thick knots. She really hates me now. The dogs come out from under the porch and start barking again.

I back away, shaking my head, flapping my hands. I don't know what to say or what to do. “I . . .” I start. “I—”

Shea's grip on the stroller's handle tightens. Tessa sucks harder on her thumb. The boy glares at me. I wish a sinkhole would open in the sidewalk and I'd fall in, disappear, never see Shea again. I don't know which is worse—her finding me in front of her house or me discovering she's been lying all summer long.

The baby rocks back and forth in the stroller. He starts to cry. Tessa scowls at him. “Blubber blubber blubber,” she says.

The dogs run up and down. One puts his front paws on top of the fence and growls at me.

“Shut up, Wolfie,” Shea tells the dog. “Shut up, all of you!”

They keep on barking and running and leaping at the fence, and the boy tugs at Shea's hand, trying to loosen it from the stroller. “Come on, you said you were taking us to the park. Let's go!”

Without even looking at me, Shea pushes the stroller past. I don't know what else to do, so I follow her. She keeps her head high and her dark curls bounce. The boy says, “That girl's following us.”

“He's not a girl. He just has long hair.” Shea doesn't look back. She's pushing the stroller as fast as she can.

“He
looks
like a girl,” the boy insists. This time Shea ignores him.

My face burns. Do I really look like a girl?

The park is at the end of the road. The train tracks run along one side of it. A few kids are playing baseball in the hot sun. I hear the bat hit the ball. Someone yells, “Easy catch!”

Shea heads for the slides and swings in the shade. From a distance, I watch her lift the baby out of the stroller. She fastens him into a plastic swing made for little kids and pushes him.

“'Wing,” he shouts. “'Wing!”

“Push me,” Tessa yells, and climbs into a swing next to the baby. Shea pushes them both. The boy swings himself, his skinny legs pumping him higher and higher.

I sit down on the bottom of the sliding board and wait to see what will happen next.

After a while, Shea takes the baby out of the swing, puts him back in the stroller, and sticks a bottle in his mouth. Tessa and the boy squat in the sandbox and dig holes with spoons Shea gives them. She looks at me. I look at her.

“What do you want?” she asks.

“I came to say I was sorry for hitting you yesterday.”

“It didn't hurt,” she says.

“That's good.”

Shea doesn't answer. She sits on a bench and rocks the stroller with her foot, pushing it back and forth, back and forth. One wheel squeaks, but the baby falls asleep anyway. Shea stares into the spindly woods. We both know there's no magic in them. Or in this hot playground.

“I babysit Tessa and Cody and Shane every weekend,” Shea says in a low voice, still avoiding my eyes. “They're my mother's kids with her second husband. My real dad died in Afghanistan.”

“He got shot,” the boy says. He leans against the picnic table and runs his finger around the initials carved there.

“Cody,” Tessa yells, “come see what I'm making!”

Cody glances at me. “A stupid house for fairies probably. Girls are so dumb.”

“Go on, Cody.” Shea pokes him with the foot that's not pushing the stroller. “You'll wake up Shane.”

I watch him walk over to a chinning bar and struggle to lift his skinny body high enough.

“So now you know,” Shea says.

“Yes.”

“There's no kayak, no weekend trips.”

“No.”

“I live in a crummy house. I hate my stepdad. I fight with my mother. I have three bratty half-sibs.” She looks at Shane and sighs. “Before my daddy died, we really did live in Guam, but my stepdad's not in the army. We move a lot because he gets fired or quits or the company goes out of business or cuts the staff or something. It's never his fault.”